Created attachment 33156[details]
More clarity in sample documentation
If we look at this file -
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tomcat/trunk/webapps/docs/appdev/sample/index.html
It says:
"The easiest way to run this application is simply to move the war file to your <b>CATALINA_HOME/webapps</b> directory."
However, when tomcat is running multiple instances, this directory is actually CATALINA_BASE/webapps . On Debian recent stable jessie release, by default tomcat8's CATALINA_HOME has no webapps directory, whereas CATALINA_BASE does, and moving the sample war file to CATALINA_BASE will deploy it.
I have attached a patch where I change the documentation to read:
"The easiest way to run this application is simply to move the war file to your <b>CATALINA_HOME/webapps</b> directory (or if you are running multiple instances, move the war file to your <b>CATALINA_BASE/webapps</b> directory)."
One reason for extra explanation here is this is one of the first things someone new to Tomcat will see, and that note will probably save them from some confusion.

Thanks for the report.
Fixed in trunk and 8.0.x for 8.0.28 onwards.
I used a slightly different form of words to provide a pointer to more information since I wanted to keep this page as simple as possible.

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